Who do you miss most when you are on the road?

A story told by a Colombian man I met on the road interrupts my thoughts and I think about my mother.

Carlos began talking about his mother while we were sitting in a courtyard in Bukhara drinking tea.

"My mother was a strong woman," he said. "I come from a big family of many brothers and sisters so my mother had to be strong.

“One day my mother and brother were walking down the street when two men approached them, grabbed my mother and put a gun to my brothers head.

“'We have orders to kill you', he was told.

“My brother put his hand up to protect himself and the bullet deflected off a bone in his hand. He then pleaded for his life. The men let him live but kidnapped my brother and mother taking them up into the mountains.

“The ransom demand arrived just before Christmas and my family was very worried but there was no option but pay. For weeks we did not sleep, not knowing if they were still alive.

“There was no time to celebrate Christmas or New Year but up in the mountains my mother was yelling at her captors telling them that they must celebrate Christmas.

“The bandits got a leg of meat and my mother cooked for every one of them then demanded she and her son be taken home.

“My mother is such an amazing woman, strong to raise a big family and to survive a kidnapping in Colombia.”

It was winter and cold in the courtyard. I refilled my teacup and wrapped my hands tight to feel its warmth. Carlos continued his story.

"My mother died in a pool," he says.

“She was living alone, and in her backyard near the garden was an empty pool.

“All the kids were away and somehow she had fallen in and couldn't get out and starved to death in the hot sun.

“When your mother dies you lose something in your soul and it stays gone for the rest of your life."

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Comments

Wiriya Sati

She sounds like a powerful woman - I love this line: “When your mother dies you lose something in your soul and it stays gone for the rest of your life." Living away from family most of my life I make efforts to see them once or twice a year and privately send them love and gratitude often thinking of how much my mother and father mean to me.

Lynn

What a heart-warming and heart-breaking story. What a terrible way to lose your mother. It was lovely to meet your parents the other night. My mother died of a stroke in 1988 and I still miss her terribly. My father had dementia for about a decade and though I loved him very much and miss him, dealing with the dementia was very wearing and so it came as somewhat of a relief when he died.